All or nothing

CLARENCE BROWN

The Oxford Chekhov Vol V: Stories 1889- 1891 translated and edited by Ronald Hingley (ouP 42s)

The Oxford Chekhov is a monumental work —that is the first thing to be said as one examines each successive volume of this set, which is expected to be ten volumes in length. It is the statement that must underlie and give scale to all other remarks about it. It will magnify what is said in praise of it and properly diminish what little may be said in its derogation. The principal effort behind it is that of translation, of course, and the criticism of it ought therefore to deal princi- pally with the translation.

It is, however, monumental beyond the range of what we normally understand by the term translation alone. In the present volume, for example (the fifth—the others so far be- ing I, II, III and VIII), we have not only all of the fiction, six stories, published by Chekhov during the years 1889 to 1891 inclusive, but also a distinguished introductory essay and, for each story, an appendix of considerable detaiL The, appendices, based, like the texts themselves, upon the twenty-volume Soviet edition that appeared in Moscow from 1944 to 1951, provide information for the English reader that has heretofore been available only for those who know Russian—information on the circumstances surrounding the compo- sition of each story, the several editions of each text, and even the most important variant readings. I think that it is therefore true to say that no Russian writer has ever been made so available to the English reader over the en- - tire range of his work as Chekhov is made in these pages. There are, to be sure, the

several notebooks of Dostoievsky's major novels that have been appearing in Chicago, but these are of an exquisitely special and voluminous interest. And there is the tre- mendous achievement of Vladimir Nabokov's four-volume translation of and commentary

to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin; but that is only one, albeit the greatest, Russian masterpiece.

I can think of no other such enterprises that might offer themselves as competitors of the Oxford Chekhov.

To put it as briefly as possible, Dr Hingley's general rule is to translate everything. That may sound absurd. Surely the same may be said of every translator? Alas, no, for it is too familiar a thing to see Chekhov and his compatriots brought over into English with linguistic bits of old Russia adhering to them like the down from the poplars that blows about the streets of Moscow in the springtime and clings to one's hair and clothes. Dr Hingley hasn't the slightest sentimental attachment even to such sacrosanct forms as all the Dooniashas' and `Pyetias' and `Lionias' that sprout like fungi upon Russian proper names. He makes Yelena into Helen, Andrey into Andrew, Marfa into Martha, Mikhail into Michael, and so on, but stops mercifully short of calling the play 'Uncle

Jack by Anthony Chekhov,' to which an ironclad consistency in the matter of names might have led him.

His way with proper names can be taken as a guide to his practice in general: if an English equivalent is to be found (e.g., 'Vice.

Chancellor' for 'Rector'), Dr Hingley fiids it and sternly uses it. Knowing that not every

reader will readily forgo a cherished, hard-

won (and usually mispronounced) store of Russica, Dr Hingley acknowledges in the

preface to an earlier volume that his solu- tions might seem brutal, and he even admits the loss of 'a certain wild poetry,' but he sticks to his principles from first to last. And against whatever loss there is, one must reckon the gain.

The best-known translator of Chekhov is, of course, Constance Garnett. Her achieve- ment in the wholesale importation of Rus-

sian letters into England is generally so flabbergasting in scale that I dislike the often

petty abuse to which she has been subjected.

Nevertheless, it is only by meastirii.g Dr Hingley's work against hers that o -e can assess the modern reader's gain. Tie ex- amples that follow were culled mon: ar less at random, but every interested reader can easily make such comparisons for himself.

A medical orderly who has lost his way in the dead of night tries to rouse someone in- side a house that he happens upon : 'Hey!

Who is within?' he improbably shouts in Garnett. 'Hey! Anyone there?' Hingley writes. Once inside, he says, according to Gar- nett, 'Bid your labourer take my horse out, granny.' Hingley makes it : 'Ask your man to stable my horse, old woman.' Later in the night, at a sudden noise, someone says, 'Ugh! The unclean spirits are abroad!' in Garnett's version, but in Hingley's, 'Whew! We must be haunted!'

The tenor of this difference is the tenor that dominates these pages. Garnett, be it

said, is generally 'closer' to the Russian in the sense that one might, by translating from her version back to the original, regularly hit on the exact words. When she causes the repellently affected heroine of 'The Princess' to say to the abbot of a monastery 'Well, have you missed your princess?' she trans- lates the words; when Dr Hingley makes it 'Did you miss little me?' he translates the

very gesture of her question. It is, to be sure, a matter of some daring to suggest in the

princess the vulgarity of a chorus girl; but then, genuine translation was never for the timid.

Well, there are no solutions to the problem of impersonating an artist in some other language: there are only decisions. It is important that they should be open decisions, openly arrived at. And few translators have even been so scrupulously fair to their readers in this regard.

In the several prefaces of this set Dr Hingley has argued the merits—not of his translations, of course, but of his principles— with great cogency. And he faithfully adheres to them, notifying us whenever he has changed his mind in the slightest detail— such as deciding that 'Tartar' should in future be 'Tatar.' Such forthrightness is very wel- come. Some readers will object to this or that bit of daring, others to some reluctance to dare, but every reader ought to be glad of an English Chekhov so honest, so consistent, and so generally sensitive to the essential merits of the original.